Page 20 of How to Hide in Plain Sight
Do I regret it yet? My little indulgence? My little experiment in adulthood?
From:Memory & Other Executive Functions
To:Conscious Mind
Subject:A Beck family dinner (before Henry died)
(cont’d)Birthdays are my favorite. On birthdays, everyone gets a chance to tell a story about the birthday boy or girl. The same ones resurface every year, but it doesn’t matter that we’ve heard them all before. We still laugh just as hard.
The stories move clockwise, and eventually the entire room will turn their focus to me. My body still shakes, this time as much from nerves as delight. I want desperately to make this opportunity count. These stories…they aren’t idle chatter. We aren’t reciting the same boring details year after year. We’re building an oral history. What is told will be remembered, what is not may never have happened at all. Each time we tell the story of Karma and the Great Wet Willy, we chisel it deeper into the family stone. To not participate is to have no say over the history we leave behind.
I want to come forth with something riotous, something that proves I’m as much a member of this family as anyone. But I’m just a child. I’ve had far fewer years and far fewer opportunities to gather stories worth telling.
And there’s so much I’ve missed as the youngest. So many fights. So many tears and secrets and lies. Moments that form the backbone of our family history but can’t be shared at a birthday. Moments that can’t be shared with the youngest at all. Instead, they choose moments of laughter or moments of horror upon which we now hang our laughter like lights on a Christmas tree.
These stories create my reality. The family I think I know. I think,This is how we were, and this is how we are.We are a good family. We are a happy family. We are an open family. We have no secrets. Not us, with our raucous, bare-it-all family dinners. Not us, with our private island and our pile of money and our separate bedrooms. Not us.
The circle complete, everyone turns to look at me.
Silence around the table. Seven pairs of eyes.
I take a deep breath, and finally,finally, I tell my story.
8
FIFTH GRADE
NOBODY EXPLAINS DAD’S ILLNESS TOme. Much like after Henry’s death, there are whispered conversations and furtive glances in my direction when my family thinks I’m not looking. But I am. I’m looking and I’m listening. The last thing I want is for this to be a repeat of the week following the first funeral, a time in which I had to become a low-grade detective, leafing through hospital bills on Speedy’s desk and searching the internet for news stories on the accident.Not this time, I think. This time I’ll just ask.
I go to Mom first. She smiles sadly and says, “The doctors don’t know, sweetie. They think it has to do with his brain.”
His brain?I think. But that doesn’t make any sense. Hislegsare what gave out, not his brain.
Unsatisfied, I seek another opinion, this time from the least intimidating member of the family. Taz furrows his eyebrows and asks, “Have you ever heard the termpsychosomatic?”—an answer that makes even less sense than my mother’s.
Out of options, I go to my sister. Karma stares at me for a long moment after I ask, eyes thin, as if my face were a billboard in the distance. She reaches out with one hand. “Some things just can’t be explained by science, Boose.” In a rare display of affection, shesmooths my hair onto the side of my head. Tenderly, she says, “Some things are just a sick joke.”
—
DESPITE MY BEST EFFORTS, THEbugbites on my legs only get worse. Each morning, I hose my body down with Off! spray. It makes me self-conscious; I’m keenly aware of the fact that I arrive to school smelling of aerosol and DEET, whatever that is.
Normally, I wouldn’t care. I have no use for the opinions of my classmates—the ones I grew up with—who have seen my house and my basement and my sprawling backyard, with its private access to the beach. Whose siblings know my siblings, whose mothers know my mother. Who might like me not for who I am but what I have.
When Dad first sat Karma, Taz, Henry, and me down to talk about money, he said, “Be careful who you let into your life. There will always be those who want to take advantage of you. Don’t run around making friends willy-nilly.”
At the time, Karma was fourteen. I was six.
We nodded emphatically.
But now—here is a boy who knows nothing of my house or my inheritance. A wonderful, mysterious boy who mumbles wonderful, mysterious words. Close enough to hear but too far to understand. Someone to whom I can speak freely, even if he doesn’t want to hear what I have to say. And I find that, for the first time ever, I care. I care about my appearance and the fact that I probably smell like mosquito repellant.
Every day after the last bell rings, I follow Manuel outside. I prattle away, continuing whatever story I left off at the end of class. He walks studiously forward, never telling me to shut up or go away, but never acknowledging my existence, either.
I follow him all the way to the carpool lane. A sleek black sedan waits for him. The windows are tinted. I can’t see who’s driving. Heclimbs in the back door and slams it shut, but the back window is open, so I keep talking. He rolls it up slowly. I keep talking, keep telling my story, right up until the glass meets the ceiling.
The next morning, I pick up right where I left off.
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